78 Reasons Why Shinjiro Aragaki Hates Tarot
by cryptically
Summary: P3 Spoilers. 78 drabbles-one for each Tarot card- about the life and times of Shinjiro Aragaki as he strives to cope with the past and raise the culinary expectations of his friends, despite Tarot's best efforts to make his life hell. Let's do this.
1. The Hierophant

**Author's Note**:

This will be a collection of drabbles based off each of the Tarot cards, giving us 78 in total. Wow! I can't promise what will or will not appear in them, but since the subject is Shinjiro Aragaki, be prepared for basically every** spoiler** there is in P3. How much each card influences the story will vary, but with any luck you'll learn a little about Tarot in addition to reading some fun stuff about an awesome character (yay!).

Hope you like them! They won't go in order, though they will be vaguely connected.

Enjoy!

-cy.

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><p>Terror had a number, a call-me-up-for-a-good-time string of digits it wrote down in your palm and you creased to smudges all the way home. And he knew exactly which number it was.<p>

Five o'clock in the morning and he's wide awake and drenched in sweat like he swam through a battlefield. If he's hearing hoofbeats, then it must be the drowning sound of his feet on the stairs, waking all the cats in the alley outside that have gone to sleep. A welterweight moon promenades through the sky, pummeling clouds.

Mistakes, some part of him has always known, are impossible to erase.

Hell, he's known it ever since Miki and the doll, once a thief, always a thief. You just get worse as you get older, from dolls to lives to stolen time, you just keep stealing and it's never enough, even when you think you're doing it for the right reasons.

Or you just don't think and it happens anyway.

The doorknob slips in his hands because he can't hold onto certainty with sweaty palms. Something in the darker recesses of his mind is screaming sacrilege and something else is screaming to get out, but mostly everything is screaming and all of a sudden it's a very noisy place in a quiet backstreet.

With a creak that might wake the dead (he wishes), the door opens and he bolts, taking the staircase in a single bound like some hobo's superhero, streaking from streetlight to streetlight and skirting sewer grates because these nights more than any he feels like they could swallow him whole.

The last train before the six A.M. expresses start is probably about as close to the grave you can get and still use your public transit pass. He's not even halfway sure why he was allowed onto this train: his hands were still shaking as he held out his ticket, mouth hanging open, gasping for breath like a strung-out druggie. But hey, maybe the conductor's lenient.

Maybe that's what life is: one big train ride where conductor's lenient, he thinks. Maybe the only person watching out to make sure you're making amends for what you did is sleeping in one of the back cars or reading the morning paper. Maybe, just maybe, it's all on you to police yourself.

He shivers in the trainlights. He's alone in this car, spiraling off towards Port Island, and from there to a place he's drawn to like a magnetic pull jerks the pit of his stomach, like he's swallowed chips of heavy metal and can't get rid of them, doomed to follow wherever the magnetic field pulls.

Because, honestly, it's always this part that scares him most- that shifting feeling that he'll be the only one left awake enough to remember what he's done and what he'll still have to do when he gets off at his stop.


	2. Nine of Swords

He woke up, sweat beading on his upper lip, choking for air.

"Shit." He said. Then, said it again to make the world stop spinning.

When that didn't work, he jerked upright sitting and shivering, trying to catch his breath.

His hands prickled like pins and needles as they raced over his chest to find the place where the spear had gone in and found nothing. He fell back onto his pillows, hands shaking on his chest as it cooled with sweat. There was no mortal wound, no spear, no enemy, no blood, even, for God's sake.

Deep breath- inhale and...

Drums still sounded in his ears, jangling through his bloodstream like a wild war march. Battlefields were nestled in his bedsheets, cavalry hiding in the folds, poised to strike with a line of spearmen not far behind.

Falling out of bed, he hardly remembered what came next, the stairs or the kitchen, but he somehow felt water slosh down his throat. No one else was in the lounge, he thought, and he supposed that was good. Not that Aki hadn't already mentioned what had happened to the others with Castor going berserk, but he'd rather not have it widely known that Shinjiro Aragaki, badass of Port Island Station's back alley, had nightmares, too.

Yeah, he might be falling into madness- it was a thought he toyed with a lot. The one redeeming quality was that Castor assured him that the descent was always brief.


	3. Queen of Wands

**Author's Note**:

Sometimes I ship really random pairings. Shinkari (Shinjiro and Yukari) is one of them. I'll include a label over all the drabbles that have Shinjiro paired up with someone (probably either Yukari or the female MC), though, so if you're a fan of one over the other, you can pick and choose.

_Pairing_: Shinkari

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><p>Sometimes when he stays up late enough that the sun starts shooting arrows at the moon, he watches her practice.<p>

"You really don't like sleeping, do ya?" Yukari winces as she lets loose another arrow from her bow. It zings toward the target, striking the ring just outside of the bull's eye. It's six A.M. and she's still yawning. "I mean, hardly anyone gets up this early, even the people who are supposed to be here practicing with me."

She sighs and frowns, and then grabs another arrow from her quiver. In the sky above her, the sun is barely poking through the clouds left over from last night's storm. The ground on the archery range is wet, and the mud from the walk over here still clings to his boots, like an indictment, a mark that he's done something wrong in coming here.

"But seriously, what's up? I don't care if you watch but everybody on the archery team is going to think that I have some crazy stalker. Again." She adds, for good measure.

She's been the only one out here for as long as he can remember, her light brown hair and pink sweater starting out like a bull's eye on a dark target, but he doesn't mention this.

"You mind?" His brain is so clouded with insomnia that even Yukari's stringing an arrow to her bow looks otherworldly, like fitting a magic wand to wires, preparing to make it issue some pyrotechnic special effects. He's impressed. It's so easy for her and Aki to practice on school grounds and be hailed for it like paragons of athletic virtue rather than shadow killers. What about him? It's not like people warn you about wild axe murderers for nothing.

Yukari's next arrow strikes the target dead center and she smiles. "Nah. Not really. But you haven't answered my question, senpai. What's brings you here?"

Shinjiro straightens and stands up, stretching. His back is aching for bed, and even Castor's raging within him seemed muted by the dawn.

"Guess I'd better be going." He mutters, and heads toward the gate. Her question is one that he asks himself more often than she knows, even though the answer is starting to make itself more and more clear, like a shot to the heart.

Yukari looks flustered and upset, but after a few moments, she's back to shooting arrows at her target, albeit maybe a little more violently than usual. When her friends get there, they'll ask what's wrong and she won't tell them.

He knows this the same way he knows that when he finally goes to sleep she'll be the last thing he sees, a queen among arrows, drifting into darkness.


	4. Knight of Cups

Shinjiro Aragaki had grown up in back-alleys and orphanages, where being followed was never a good thing.

He was also fairly sure that Akihiko had felt the same way, been aware of this startling problem, but the way that he was just letting all those girls fawn over him and tag along after him wherever he went, it was something else. They traveled in swarms, like a group of wasps buzzing around their hive protectively.

From past experience, Shinjiro knew how much his friend disliked being protected. Akihiko was a stand-alone guy: you either fought beside him or behind him, but never in between him and the danger. Couldn't these girls see that?

"Akihiko-senpai! Don't you have practice for the big tournament coming up?"

"Yeah, senpai! We're all gonna come and watch you fight!"

Guess not.

Hell, it was like some kind of crazy brigade, vigilantes watching your back and stalking you at the same time.

"Aki." Shinjiro walked over the threshold that separated Gekkoukan from the outside world, feeling like he'd traipsed over some sort of sacred line when entering the school grounds during the daytime. _He_ knew he didn't belong here.

Akihiko knew it, too.

"Shinji," the white-haired boy said, "what brings you here? I can't say I'm not surprised."

Shinjiro rolled his eyes. "Damn straight. What's your problem? I thought I told you to keep those kids away from that part of Port Island."

Instantly, a hush fell over the girls, as though an electrical current had zipped through them and set them all on edge, focused and attentive. Shinjiro ignored them. He'd come here to say his piece and he was going to say it, come hell or high water.

The boxer took a deep breath and sighed sheepishly. "You know I didn't send them there to persuade you, Shinji."

"That's not what I'm talking about. I know you like to have that little job all to yourself." Shinjiro snorted. "I mean, keep them out of there, period. It's a dangerous place."

"Oh my God."

"Did a hobo just threaten Akihiko-senpai? We should call a teacher, right...?"

A small and angry crowd of females was beginning to form. This was exactly what he was talking about, Shinjiro frowned, all these people following you around everywhere, reminding you to pay attention to them- Akihiko couldn't possibly enjoy it; his instincts would be the same as Shinjiro's on this point: get away. And yet, he put up with it. Why?

"They're free to go wherever they want." Akihiko answered, as though replying to both Shinjiro's asked and unasked questions. "Even though it was pretty stupid of them to go hunting for clues in that alley, I'm not going to say that they can't. It's a personal freedom."

"Yeah," Shinjiro replied darkly, "and personal freedom never hurt anyone, right?"

There was a moment where no one said anything.

Akihiko ran a hand through his powder-white hair in thought before he broke the silence with a sigh. "Besides, it's not like I could do much to stop them anyway. You've seen them. You know that they're pretty good at sneaking around."

"Sneaking around, my ass. Some sucker almost got his teeth handed to him before I found them." Seeing that Akihiko wasn't going to be much use to him in the matter, Shinjiro turned toward the gate. "Fine. Looks like your fans are waiting."

"Oh, those girls?" Akihiko cast a worried glance over his shoulder. "Usually they go away after a while. They've been a lot more persistent since that girl from 2-E disappeared- I think half of them are worried that I'm going to vanish like she did."

Shinjiro tsked. "Take care that you don't, Aki."

And maybe Akihiko was right, maybe personal freedom meant having a choice in where you want to go. Or if you let other people go where they wanted to without asking questions.

But then again, he'd seen that freedom had some pretty steep consequences. If you weren't careful, walking in a dark alley late at night, it didn't take all that much to make you disappear.


	5. Queen of Pentacles

You could tell the story of descent into madness as gently as you wanted: it would always have something more sinister that skimmed its surface, waiting for when you'd shut eyes to strike out and claim you. Even the people he had left in the dormitory seemed more muted these days since the death of that woman; however much they still tried to be his friends, he knew they struggled.

And maybe they're right about that, he thinks as he throws breadcrumbs to the pigeons and other tired birds outside of Wild Duck Burger. It's almost time for the dinner rush, almost time for these weary birds to find their way back to their nests. The sparrows chirp to themselves incoherently, and the morning doves garble in strange languages about the passing of the time.

How _did_ the body get so mangled? Axe wounds. Hit and run didn't explain anything, and they were kidding themselves trying to pass it off as something else-

Just another reckless punk on the street, messing up someone else's life, sure. That was the same.

Outside in the back of the restaurant, he hears a mother and her child talking excitedly about what they're going to order. She wants a deluxe duck burger and reminds the child that because daddy got a raise he can get whatever he wants. But the kid just wants a regular duckling meal, maybe extra fries. Oh, and an extra toy. Laughing, the mother ushers him inside and says that as long as he can behave himself, he can have both.

Shinjiro breathes in the cooling evening air. When he thought about it, the loss of a mother was cataclysmic.

There was no one to tell you that you could have the extra fries with that, or even that someone's birthday was getting close, or that you did well on your schoolwork. What was that kid doing, the one that he'd seen with the woman Castor had-

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. As an orphan, Shinjiro won't understand. That's what they think. And sure, maybe he doesn't have a mother or a father who got a raise, but abandonment is a language with a million different dialects and to know one is to know many.

Time for his next shift. He knows where he'd rather be, somewhere guiltless, some place sparse, without all the duck advertisements and boiling fryers demanding his attention.

In a sense, madness was as generous a descent as any other, if less brief.


	6. Ace of Cups

The napkin became a mess of folds before he could stop himself.

It was like he was crushing a flower, something beautiful was vanishing in his hands, seeping through them like so much sand through his fingers. Talking to this girl felt like that, as if he were trying to hold onto grains of conversation across the table from her without dropping any. Hell, didn't a guy even get points for trying?

A part of Shinjiro Aragaki wondered why he was even here. The girl was making small talk about the team, just like this was any other date with any other guy.

But he was definitely not any other guy, not in any way. What on earth was she trying to do, reform him or something? Make herself look good by taking him out for food late at night, her treat?

Tsh. Girls. He wasn't sure he'd ever understand this.

It was like this was one of the unwritten rules of being a streetwise badass: you don't fall in love. Love was just like that napkin: it ended up creased and crumpled into a heap on his lap from nervousness, when it had started out so perfectly and sweetly pressed.


	7. King of Cups

Freedom is a dirty word.

"Ah, Shinjiro-kun. Stick around for a moment." Shuji Ikutsuki's voice drifted over to him, as his hand was on the polished brass of the door, poised to go out. "Tell me, how are you liking living in the dorm again? It feels like I hardly see you in here even though it has again become your home."

Shinjiro grimaced. Damn straight, he made it his priority to be out of this place as much as he could, rather than get roped into more social outings with that group.

"Fine." He answered, still fingering the doorknob.

"It must have been quite the ordeal for you," Ikutsuki continued blithely unaware of how much he was being an obstacle, "living on the streets. Did you meet any interesting people? Of course, I expect that they would have been very different from the people that you interact with here."

Shinjiro remained silent. What was that guy getting at? It was like he was begging him to mention other punks with Personae over by Que Sera Sera, whatever their names were, the Stella-or-something group.

Or maybe, Shinjiro reflected, he himself just hated it when people stuck their noses into his business, trying to pass it off as kind-hearted compassion. Hell, the last thing he wanted from anyone was pity.

"No one stands out after a while." Shinjiro replied, eventually. Ikutsuki seemed pleased.

"Well that's good then. Oh! And I forgot to mention it, but the group will be taking a trip to visit Officer Kurosawa soon." Ikutsuki's smile seemed...a little forced? Damn, what was up with that guy tonight?

"I guess I just didn't want you getting..." the chairman seemed to be having difficulty controlling his facial features, "appre-hend-sive!"

And with that, he exploded into giggles.

"Get it? Apprehensive is nervous, and so 'apprehendsive' is apprehensive about being apprehended!" Ikutsuki could barely contain his laughter as he explained.

Shinjiro felt his frown deepen into a grimace as he at last opened the door and stepped out. "I think I'll pass."

It was going to take some kind of miracle to keep him in that dorm. For some reason, he was starting to really hate that man.


	8. Six of Swords

**Author's Note**:

Sorry for the deluge of chapters earlier; I've been traveling for the past few days (and still am) and wanted to leave you guys with something fun to read while I was out. Updates should be a little more regular now.

This chapter is going to be a little different, which is the other reason for this note. It's the Six of Swords, which I've interpreted as travel, specifically traveling away from problems to solve them. It comes in six parts, with weird tenses and all sorts of convoluted timelines. Thought I'd warn you ahead of time.

Enjoy, and thanks for all of your reviews! They are much appreciated.

-cy.

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><p>Maybe it was time for a change of scene.<p>

He was starting to feel the alley becoming a part of him, starting to feel more of an affinity with the streetlights and the crumpled papers on the ground as they rustled past at midnight. He didn't even feel the nervous tension the dark rooms and seedy bars had for him anymore; the alleyway was becoming as familiar to him as himself.

And that was a problem.

Ken had joined SEES for the very same reason why Shinjiro had run away from it; in a sense, all things were circular. Every escape had an end, and often a fatal one at that.

Was destiny that impossible to reconcile with, too difficult to shape or too slippery to catch hold of and change? Or should he just march down the path that had been set out for him and accept it?

Shinjiro Aragaki kicked a stray can in the road with unusual vigor. Damn, he was trapped.

-o-

She found Akihiko standing in front of the memorial.

The gymnasium was empty except for him, the glistening floors reflecting the solemn black of the table and the flowers seemed muted against dark fabric. The floor had been polished to such a high sheen that it made the memorial seem almost radiant, as though the table, the photograph, and the flowers were dancing in the light, with a sole figure standing between the two worlds, the living and the dead.

"Hey, senpai." Yukari ventured quietly, not wanting to disturb the strange balance, but feeling awkward all the same. "I thought I would find you here."

Even before she said it, she knew it would sound dumb. Yeah, duh, he'd be here. His best friend just _died_, for God's sake. Where else would he be?

They stood in silence for a while, the only movement the wavering of the fluorescent lighting above them as it hit the floorboards. Then Akihiko spoke up.

"You know, I think he had it all worked out, Shinji, I mean. I think he knew what he was doing from the very start. You'd think that a guy like him wouldn't want to die, would want to run away from all of this so that he could escape it, but..."

The shift in Akihiko's voice caused her to turn.

"It's like he knew he was going on a journey."

-o-

Journey, my ass.

Shinjiro Aragaki doesn't travel, not away from this island. He can't even go to Aki's sporting events anymore since leaving school, and that would be the only draw for him anyway. But sometimes he'll take the train, just because he can, even when he knows exactly where he'll end up when he's done.

"You got a ticket, mister?" The conductor asks brusquely.

Mister, huh?

Shinjiro fishes around in his pocket for the slip of paper and holds it out. Examining it carefully as though expecting something wrong with it, the man squints and then nods before moving across the otherwise empty car. It's late at night; chances are, he'll be the only passenger for a few of them.

But being a "mister" to someone, hell that was weird. There used to be a time when that guy would call him "kid" and tell him not be out too late or else his parents would worry. Laughing, as a child Shinjiro didn't mention that he'd never had parents, or that he was staying out too late to dispatch some Shadows. It was nice, though, knowing that someone else in the world worried and was looking out for you.

Mister? He supposes it fits. You become an adult damn fast when you end someone's life.

-o-

"You seen Shinji?" Akihiko asked.

Sitting in the lounge, reading her book, Mitsuru looked up. Her deep red eyes gleamed in the lamplight. Everything about her spelled the right kind of upbringing, a certain elite protectedness radiating about her, from the cursive hand that danced in the margins of her text, to the sensible black-buttons on her jacket, to the elegant braid of her hair. "No. Why? Has he gone missing? He knows about the mission tonight, I'm sure."

Running a hand through his silver-white hair, Akihiko sighed. "You know Shinji. He doesn't go missing, he just goes off to the same place. I just have a bad feeling."

Mitsuru closes her eyes and smiles knowingly, lips pursed. "It's a full moon. I'd be surprised if you _didn't_ have a bad feeling, Akihiko."

-o-

"Are you paying attention?" Yukari's voice grates on his ears.

"What?" Shinjiro replies off-handedly. It's one week left to the deadline- dead literally, in this case- and he's starting to get jumpy.

Flighty, maybe that's what he'd call it if he were planning on running. But he's not. Because now, so close to the end, a lot more things are becoming clear.

Whatever he's made of himself, whatever he's tried to better or improve with learning how to cook and making dinners for the team, making friends with the dog and saving those kids' collective ass from all kinds of danger, all of it can be undone in a moment. Nothing, no state of being in life is so set that it cannot be changed.

"This is hopeless." Yukari moans. And yeah, he has to agree. Hopeless is a good word for it right now.

She rolls her eyes. "It's like I'm talking to a wall. Look, senpai, with all due respect, maybe you just need a break. Like we did earlier in the year before you joined us. We had a great time. Going to the beach and getting to relax really helped us to fight better. Maybe it's time you took a vacation, too."

Shinjiro almost stumbles as they walk. Swallowing, he tries to act as though nothing's happened, that she hasn't said what he thinks she has.

"Yeah, vacation sounds good."

-o-

This is the first time he's actually felt like he's going anywhere.

He's been caught between a world of reality and reflection, where life and death intermingle through frosted glass and fluorescent lights, with the cruel hand of his Persona lurking just beyond the edges of his vision. It's like watching trains go by all day: the only thing you see after a while is the light and dark flashes of the windows disappearing into night. You never know where they're going, but you know you'll never see them again.

Ahead of him, he can see an orange jacket waiting in an alleyway he's known all too well. As he steps closer, he knows he's boarding a train that he can't get off of, that this will be a short ride and for the first time in his life, he won't come back from this alley without having settled things, punched his ticket in with all the right people, and stepped firmly into the car.

The puddles from the tropical storm a few days ago are still on the sidewalk, reflecting his face back at him. For a moment, he thinks he sees Castor rearing up on his horse in one, but then he steps on it and the vision's gone.

Journey, huh? It's goddamn time he got out of this town.

He half expects one of the puddles to swallow him whole. But instead of pulling him down, walking through them gives him strange sense of calm, like he can feel his soul already dancing between the worlds, like light on glazed wood, blinking off into the distance urgently like the headlights of passing trains.


	9. Two of Wands

"And now, a word from our sponsors-"

Sitting on the lounge chair, half-watching TV, half-pretend-sleeping, he's trying to avoid having to go to Tartarus tonight. No reason in particular, it's just that the good shows are on and he doesn't want to miss them. Okay, and maybe Castor's been a little weird lately, a little more active than usual, and instead of giving into his Persona's urges, he wants to fight them.

Akihiko and Mitsuru keep wanting to explore more of the upper levels, but with three people, he knows that that's not going to happen. Yeah, he and Aki are pretty strong, but it's not like they can climb up Tartarus by themselves, however much Mitsuru could support them with her omni-tool of a Persona.

He exhales, eyes closed. Persona.

Inside him, Castor shifts and Shinjiro gasps.

It's felt like this more and more, that his Persona is trying to break through, prod at the chains of his control. But maybe he's being too hasty. After all, it's not like his Persona's done anything yet. And Akihiko and Mitsuru don't have these problems when they fight. So it must just be a mind thing, like with horses. They'll always sense it when you're afraid.

Feeling his stomach grumble, he makes his way into the kitchen when he's sure that both of his dorm-mates have gone to sleep. Cautiously, still not used to having all this food at his disposal, he opens a cabinet.

Instant ramen. Shinjiro sighs. Well, that was pretty disappointing. Even at the orphanage, the kitchen was stocked with more interesting foods than this.

He's about to give up when he notices the bag of rice and the pile of cookbooks sitting untouched in one corner. A few minutes later, he's got a wok out and is reading over the directions for stir-fry.

The knife slides easily up and down through the carrots, like the falling of an axe. Something inside of him feels calmer, almost placated, and he smiles.

-o-

The knife rose and fell over the carrots like a bad dream. Vegetable juice sluiced out of them in drops that seethed across the cutting board and his fingers in a gooey orange mess.

Shinjiro Aragaki felt Castor stir within him and quickly washed his hands, getting all the juice off, and then swallowed the suppressant that he had been holding between his teeth.

Cooking was always something of a gamble these days, which was why he'd come prepared. The cold rush of the pill rambled through his veins- or maybe it was just the placebo kicking in- and the blood rush subsided.

"Can we have another basket of fries? And that stew's on its way, right?" The maitre d' glanced in. "Oh, good. Thanks again, Aragaki. You have no idea how much of a favor this is to me."

Shinjiro shrugged. Ever since the head chef at this place got sick, the maitre d' has been treating him like a god since he agreed that he'd sub in until the guy could get well. It's not like it was a big deal: the menu was fairly simple and his past work at restaurants gave him all the references he needed. Hell, if he really wanted, he could make a life out of this, maybe start up his own place, and see where it went.

He gently stirred the stew and slid the carrots in, checking to make sure that the broth was at the right consistency before heading over to see how his sous chefs were doing on the fryers. Sous chefs, yeah right. That was their job title, but these goons wouldn't know how to prepare sauces and soups if someone was holding a gun to their head.

But then again, people didn't come here for fancy-ass sauce and soup. They came to this slightly-sleazy restaurant to eat okay food, talk and get drunk with okay friends, and then go back to their okay lives, content in the mediocrity and okay-ness of everything.

Ever since the accident with Castor, he'd reconsidered a lot of things people did to live. Eating, for example. With life so fragile, why weren't more people doing all that they could to prolong it? Exercise, eating right, all these things that could be done to cheat death that so many people just let fall by the wayside.

It didn't seem... sensical. Like when you considered all the other things people had in perspective in comparison.

"One more order of fries, you got that, Aragaki?"

Maybe it was time to change that. Death couldn't be allowed to win all the battles, not that easily.


	10. Seven of Swords

Even the best plans go wrong.

"What the hell?" Shinjiro gasps, fanning the smoke away from his nose and mouth. It's black and viscous, hanging over the kitchen in ominous clouds and an angry, acrid smell is issuing from the stove that can only mean...

"Fuuka!" Yukari cries out as she dashes in and then immediately gags. "What happened? Are you alright?"

"I was just trying to make crepes for everyone to have for," here she coughs, "breakfast! I figured that everyone would...be hungry after the full moon and would want...ugh, good food!" Fuuka wails, backing against the wall as she wheezes and recoiling from the stove as though it were a fierce beast.

Good food? Shinjiro grimaces at the mess smoking on the griddle as he fumbles for the fire extinguisher and shakes his head. "Everybody, get out."

"But-" Fuuka protests.

"Out."

"Come on, Fuuka," Yukari urges her gently, "really, it'll be okay. It looks like the kitchen will survive another day and it's really probably in everybody's best interests to leave senpai alone now."

Now clear of the kitchen disaster zone, Fuuka bows her head solemnly. "I wish I could help...but whenever I try..."

Yukari holds up a hand. "Hey, you do a lot. Honestly, don't worry about it. Knowing Shinjiro-senpai, he'll want to do the entire thing himself, regardless of what you say. Think of it this way, you've still treated us to a wonderful breakfast, just... brought to us by a different chef than you originally thought."

Shinjiro snorts as the smoke clears through the open window and he can see the sun rising over the city haze. He wants to interrupt Yukari and say that they can prepare the damn breakfast themselves. But he has to hand it to her, the girl in the pink sweater is right. He sure as hell won't let anyone back into his poor kitchen for a while, and damn it all, he's hungry for pancakes anyway.

Maybe he's too much of a lone wolf for his own good.


	11. Two of Pentacles

Everything has its own balance, its own harmonic points at which stability is guaranteed, the calm moments in the hectic wavering of existence.

"Have you noticed," Yukari said, dead serious, "that these takoyaki aren't the same size? Like at all?"

"Yuka-tan, in case no one informed you, they come from this thing called a _fryer_," Junpei retorts. "They're not meant to be equal by nature. Besides, why does it even matter? What are you gonna do, use them as takoyaki weights?"

Akihiko popped one into his mouth and instantly flinched.

So, this was supposed to be them doing something fun to outweigh the seriousness of their mission. Shinjiro couldn't say that he liked it, even though he agreed that their little group would probably break if they didn't fit in some time to relax. And yet...

"Ow! Man, that was hot." Akihiko laughed, albeit a little hoarsely. "You wanna try one, Shinji? The taste is something out of this world; you won't regret it."

He didn't like this waiting, the downtime between sessions of fighting and sleep. And regret? Hell, Aki, he wanted to say, regret was a healthy part of his balanced breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and nothing, not even this sainted takoyaki was going to cure him of that.

"No thanks." Shinjiro said. "I'm not really in the mood for octopus now."

Grinning, Akihiko shared a chuckle with the rest of the group. The hell?

"It's from Octopia, Shinji. So there's no octopus in it."

Shinjiro grimaced, knowing that he was trapped. What kind of crazy-ass place didn't put octopus in takoyaki? Today was just not his day.


	12. Two of Cups

Soulmates, huh?

Well, it's not like it could be a long romance anyway. Shinjiro was of a mind that his only soulmate could be disaster, but hey, if this girl wanted to try and beat the odds, upset the scales so that they wavered in his favor, he was more than happy to let her try.

He just wasn't going to get his hopes up.

They walked through the shops that lined the second and third floors of the Iwatodai strip mall, passing through the manga store and picking up the latest edition of a series they both followed. They'd even begun to read through it, each of them doing certain characters' voices, when a shop assistant gave them an odd look. Flushed, Shinjiro bought the book and stuffed it gruffly into a coat pocket for later.

Maybe this was the better side of emotion, where being with someone actually made you appreciate your own weird tastes more and enjoy them, versus the side that Castor brought out, the wilder, untamed part of him.

Still, it seemed so transient. Even if his time wasn't limited, he thought he'd still feel the same way about this relationship: there was always a sense of something impending, like their time was slowly trickling out of an unseen hourglass.

And he could be totally wrong, after all. Maybe this was just him getting cold feet and they really were destined for each other.

Or something. Hell, maybe she wouldn't like beef bowls and then it would be all over.

It couldn't last. He knew it, but he still held the door open for her.


	13. Seven of Wands

The punks are getting restless. And hey, he knew they would- it's just what happens when you stay in a place so long that you become a fixture. \One of these days, they're going to try and try him on again: he can taste it in the air. All he has to make sure is that he stays ready.

-o-

An arm made out of rock is pressing its sword down onto him, attempting to choke what little, limited life he has left out of him. Shinjiro can feel his axe slipping against the force of the shadow, and wonders if Justice arcana monsters seem to hate his guts for the same reason that SEES's single Justice arcana member seems to hate them, that they all have somehow conversed and know that he's a murderer.

He grunts and shoves back, to no avail. That's damn unfair, though he won't say that he doesn't deserve it.

Shoving again, Shinjiro manages to twist the axe at such an angle such that the arm flips onto its side, the sword that was leering so close to his neck now feet away from its owner. His breathing comes heavily, but even as the monster stills his hand has already found his Evoker and his mind is preparing to call Castor.

With a final, decisive swing, the shadow vanishes back into the recesses of Tartarus, now cut up into little pieces. Inside of him, Shinjiro can feel Castor laughing, enjoying the sport of death.

"The shadows are getting restless." Mitsuru murmurs, sheathing her foil.

Restless, yeah. Shinjiro thinks.

-o-

They're not the only ones.

"Shinji!" Akihiko is waving like a madman over by the dormitory entrance, grinning as though he's been convinced that everything is better, that somehow all of his problems have been solving by having his best friend back on SEES. Shinjiro really wants to tell him that no, his problems are still there. Miki still haunts him, he can see it in Akihiko's eyes, that same longing, that determination. It's older now, but it's like a fire that's been burning for a while, complacent, no longer shooting ash towards the heavens, but just as bright.

"We're going out to the film festival! You should come." Akihiko says.

The other members of the group gathered there agree, nodding their heads and promising him that it'll be worth his time.

Shinjiro wants to laugh. Worth his time? Since when was his time worth anything after he killed that woman?

But they're hearing none of it. Guilt, apparently, is taking a day off today. It's Akihiko, Yukari, Mitsuru, Fuuka, Koromaru, and that kid against him and that's six on one. Damn.

He just can't win somedays.


	14. Page of Cups

Dreams, huh?

"Come on, Shinji. I'm going in for my Future Consultation tomorrow, I have to think about this stuff. Like what I want to do when I become a senior next year and then university or a job." Akihiko Sanada leaned against the alley wall, looking calm but also very out of place among the seedier residents of Port Island Station in his crisp uniform and bright red vest against the dark brick. "Don't you think that it's time to move on, too?"

"Move on from what?"

A cat mewled somewhere in the piles of trash and discarded scraps from the bars. Shinjiro had been here for a little over a year now. He didn't see what the big deal was now about a stupid meeting with a teacher that neither party took seriously (at least, not for the time that he was at Gekkoukan) but he figured that it was just one more play from Akihiko at being the hero.

He didn't leave, but his gaze remained fixed ahead at a familiar spot on the ground. Move on, my ass.

"You know what I mean." Akihiko replied, getting up from the wall. "Damn it, Shinji, it's like you've lost everything. Don't you remember what it was like before all this happened, when you were cocky as hell and you wouldn't shut up about all the things that you were going to do? You had dreams, Shinji, and you were going to give them your all. You could have gone after them. What happened to that?"

Shinjiro looked over, eyes cold, his mouth twisted in slight disdain. "What do you think happened, Aki? I can't go back on what happened. That future you're talking about was gone the moment I let Castor slip."

"Hey!" Akihiko's hands curled, a gesture that Shinjiro was very well acquainted with. "The Shinji I knew wouldn't give up. He would keep dreaming, keep trying to change things. Something bad happened, but it doesn't mean it has to rule your life. Why can't you go back?"

"You think I want to?" He pushed away from the wall, setting his shoulders for the fight. "No way. What do you think got me into this? You said it yourself: I was cocky as hell."

And when Akihiko's right straight connected with his lip, god damn it, he knew he'd had enough of dreams for a while, too.


	15. Eight of Swords

The rhythm of the struggle was familiar to him by now, the panic as his Persona lurched forward and attempted to seize control was almost as well-trained as his reflex to search through his coat pockets, find the pill container, pop it open. He was running low, running too low, and this was only the beginning of the hell that he would have to go through if he wanted to keep Castor restrained.

The lid of the plastic bottle bit into his palm as his sweating fingers slipped on it, took it off too fast. His eyes hurt somewhere behind his head, like something else in his mind was trying to push him out and take control, something that begged to be given one more chance in a world where there were no second chances.

Reckless, they called _this_ being reckless.

Didn't they understand that he was saving the world from something too?

The stale film of the pill stuck to his tongue before he could swallow it, made him grimace at the taste before forcing it down. Castor railed at him, pushing more frantically now that he knew what was happening, knew that he wouldn't get another chance unless the mind that he occupied got distracted, careless again. His Persona was like that, that kind of ruthless, waiting in the shadows for the right moment to hit his weaknesses.

Both of them were fighting a war. Castor, Shinjiro knew, would try to win with brute force. His Persona was a lot like the axe that he carried: blunt and powerful, a shock fighter who destabilized his enemies before going in for the kill. But Shinjiro had his own weapons, ones that Castor couldn't fight.

Yeah, so they were risky. That was the point. In a battle against an opponent that he knew he'd never be able to defeat, a self that he would be and had never been able to conquer, his only option was to outlast him, to be the one in control at the end.

And maybe it meant that that end was coming a little faster than originally planned. It would just mean that he'd finally succeeded in saving the world from himself.


	16. Justice

"Ken, dude, is there something wrong? You haven't even touched your food!" Junpei explained, eyebrows receding into the cover of his baseball cap.

The spread of the meal was something, alright. Shinjiro had busted his ass, used every recipe and table trick he knew to up the presentation, make the dinner a little bit better. This was about making memories, after all, leaving no loose ends. He didn't want anybody there to say when it was all over that they wished they could have had more time with him. He wanted, if nothing else, for the whole thing to be over, done, and closed.

His eyes flicked over to where Ken was seated, picking up on the uncomfortable expression on the kid's face, the way that everyone else was looking at him expectantly, wondering why on earth he didn't dig in too.

It seemed like it should be obvious. The kid was, what, nothing if not the personification of Justice and there were strict lines between what was right and wrong. Wasn't there something about food and trust they'd learnt about in composition, or modern literature, or something? You don't eat in the house of your enemy.

He wasn't all that surprised.

"Hey, you should really give it a try!" Yukari quipped. "I know it's kinda different from the stuff we eat here normally, but it's really good!"

"Yes, please do, Ken-kun." Fuuka smiled sheepishly down the table. "Shinjiro-san helped me, and we tasted all the dishes before we served them, so they're all definitely good!"

But that just seemed to make Ken more uncomfortable.

Shinjiro took a breath, getting ready to call everybody off. Whatever. Look, he hadn't thought that it would work anyway. Yeah, it would have been nice if he could have shown that kid that he wasn't as bad as he must have seemed after that night in the alleyway, axe bloody and mind in warring pieces, eyes gone hollow with shock. He knew that he would pay for it, that a life taken could only be repaid with another life- each of the kid's stares when they passed each other alone in the hall told him that.

He just hoped that maybe, when this was all over, Ken could see him for what he really was: someone who had done something terrible, but who might not have ended up all that bad if things had happened differently.

And sure, part of it was sappy and dumb. But the other, more practical part was that if Ken really did want to kill him, then Shinjiro was going to make him understand exactly what he would go through beforehand. The cruelest part of coming to grips with his own darkness hadn't been the sheer fact that he had lost control of Castor, but that his actions had caused so many repercussions. One of them was even looking awkwardly at his food right now.

All actions had consequences.

"Oh, right." Ken looked up. "That's right. Sorry, I just got distracted by how pretty it looked."

"Well, presentation is everything, you know." Yukari stuck her tongue out playfully. "I guess that's why Stupei here never seems to have any luck."

"Hey, hey, hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said."

Shinjiro glanced over, his own food growing slightly colder before him. Ken ate the dinner, but from the careful way that he brought food to his mouth and straightened his napkin, it looked more like an exercise in self-control than anything. Akihiko caught his eye and smiled, but Shinjiro didn't smile back.

In between bites of stirfry, Ken made a joke about a teacher at his school and the whole table laughed.

All actions had consequences, after all.


	17. Eight of Pentacles

She's asking him how he got to be so good at making coffee. Hell, like he knows.

The two of them are sitting at a table in the middle of Chagall Cafe, the steely greens and warm atmosphere clashing against his own maroon coat and street punk chic. He'd come here because he'd needed to get some more coffee beans and since the dorm didn't have its own press, he'd have to get them ground at the counter rather than just picking up a bag and making a hasty retreat.

"It's just something that you do enough times that you eventually get better at it." He shrugs, using a sip of his cup of cafe coffee as cover. It's not bad. For all the hype this place got as one of the Gekkoukan's most popular after-school hang-outs, you'd never think that the coffee would actually be as good as they said. "You don't have to be a genius to be able to learn to make a good pot of coffee. You just need the right ingredients and a halfway-decent coffeemaker."

Castor had given him enough time to learn.

He'd been woken up in the middle of the night enough times by a Persona threatening to overwhelm the borders of his consciousness, wanting to break out, that Shinjiro had had to do something. It started a few days after the incident, the night sweats, the memories haunting him from every corner of the room, the sleeplessness. Eventually he would drag himself down to the lounge and stare vacantly at the walls, but as it soon became apparent that this bombardment wasn't going to stop, Shinjiro took action, rescuing a coffeemaker from obscurity in the back of the kitchen and slowly experimenting with it.

The first few days were a mess. Even now, looking back on them, he remembers that he was desperate enough to drink what sludge he'd been able to produce, but little else. Maybe he was too tired to commit the rest to memory. The human body learns by doing, after all, and that was what had scared him most about Castor. His Persona had killed someone and knew how to do it now. It couldn't unlearn, and there would always be the chance that it would happen again.

But, gradually, things got better. He was no stranger to the culinary arts and within a week, his coffee had improved. It was around that time that he'd started to realize that there was no way that he could keep living in the dorm, not as he was now, already beginning to investigate ways to keep Castor under wraps and with no intention for working for SEES again.

Weird, then, that he's sitting here with this brown-haired girl, the SEES leader, her head cocked to the side as though to say that she finds it funny and kind of quaint that he's so well-versed on coffee-making. Yeah, definitely pretty weird.

"It's not like I come in here often, anyway." He puts the cup down, wondering why in hell it's taking them so long to grind a damn one-pound bag of coffee. "So don't act like it's a usual thing."

After his flight from the dorm, he'd set himself up in a place in Port Island, but it was bare essentials only. He took odd jobs at restaurants, and despite his punk appearance, when his letters of referral from employers checked out, places were glad to have him. The money he earned covered the rent, food, and pills. Coffee became a remnant of his past, a less efficient way of banishing Castor.

Still, he has to admit that he's kinda missed it. He's heard that taste and smell are the two senses that you never really forget, and when the smell of the coffee lifts up to him from the mug, he can recall the last time he'd drunk it, watching the sun come up on the day he'd left Aki and Mitsuru and SEES for good.

Or so he thought. He smiles to himself. Maybe it wasn't so bad moving back into the dorm after all, if only for a little while. Castor still wakes him up, his supply of suppressants is running low, thanks to giving some to Chidori and Strega's cutting him off once they found out he was back on SEES. Already, he's starting to feel tired when he wakes up, starting to appreciate the old standby of caffeine as the anniversary of that woman's death draws closer and he knows that he'll have to confront her son, both of them well aware of how that'll play out.

Days are coming when he won't be able to sleep, he knows. Finally, after two years, events are carefully building themselves toward a climax, one that he knows he'll have to meet head-on. But it's not like he doesn't dread it all the same.

"Having coffee around just helps to get through the mornings, okay?"


	18. Three of Wands

Shadows, shadows, shadows. Night after night, they scale that damn tower and try to reach the top. It doesn't seem to matter that he'll be gone after the end of the month, he's running himself ragged to do it. Tartarus, he realizes, is the one thing that he's not sure if he'll be able to resolve fully before October. Maybe that's why he's so intent on going each night.

Shinjiro Aragaki's breath clouds out and then disperses in the winter air. He's on the roof of the seedy mahjong club in Port Island, leaning against the side-rails and looking out over the city. It's always the roof. Something about the soul trying to escape from high places, right? Maybe that's why Castor doesn't like being contained, why he fights.

Shinjiro's not entirely sure.

From the very first step, he's climbed that tower, scaled it inch by inch in an attempt to find out what was really going on, stop those damn shadows from ever coming back, and erase the need for Persona, for Castor. When he thinks about it like that, reminds himself that there's no way that SEES is going to make it to the top before his time runs out, he ends up in places like this, on the roofs of buildings that he probably should know better to stay off of.

It won't take long before someone downstairs notices that the emergency exit is open, that he used it to get up here. He has a feeling that some of his teammates from the dorm probably suspect that something is up. How much longer does he have before someone notices, someone takes action? How can you predict the outcome of so many actions when all you have to go off of is an unlocked door, or a room with a cardboard box left on an otherwise empty desk?

He's come where he has all by himself. Castor hitches along for the ride, but ultimately the person that has carried this body to the rooftops, has pushed it up Tartarus, has been him all along. Maybe someone will follow him. Hell, maybe that leader girl will figure it out. He already knows that she's getting close, too close when she asked about his lost watch.

Shinjiro looks out on the city of Port Island, watching as the movie theatre lights snap into neon view. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she figured it out, showed up at the last moment to make everything better, save the day with her constantly shifting repertoire of Personas, be SEES' wonder kid all over again and avert his impending disaster. Yeah, wouldn't that be nice. His sarcasm has been wasted on himself for a long time; tonight is nothing different.

It's cold up here, with the lights flicking on below as Que Sera Sera kicks into business and the drunks and punks mill through the alleyway and chainlink promenade. Akihiko would always find him on the roof of Gekkoukan. Maybe, he thinks to himself, he's just been waiting for someone else dumb enough to chase after him, willing to scale another roof to get to him.

For a moment, he squints into the distance, trying to pick out a head of brown hair and familiar barrettes in a crowd. He doesn't realize that he's taken a few steps closer to the edge to get a better look, see if it really is her, until a gust of wind rushes between the buildings and hits him with a wintry chill. Hell with this. Like she'd care. She's probably just watching movies with friends.

But it doesn't change the fact that he'll still return there, to the same rooftops, the same places. He'll still keep climbing that tower, just like he'll still sneak through the backdoor to get up here. He used to think that it was an exercise in will, in accomplishing something, but now he's not so sure.

Maybe, he wonders, he just wants someone to come up here and find him. And maybe he hopes it'll be her.


	19. Strength

Walk the dog, huh?

"Hey, you ready?" He opens the door and Koromaru dashes out, then waits patiently by the side of the road for his human companion to catch up. Shinjiro shakes his head good-naturedly at the dog, gives Akihiko a wave as the boxer calls out something about being back before midnight, and then lets the door swing shut behind him.

The dog, seeing that his companion is finally walking, starts on his prescribed route.

They both have places that they keep coming back to, Shinjiro thinks. Maybe that's why he likes this dog so much. Koromaru has the priest that he still cares for, and even now, as he noses through the sandbox and jungle gym, the dog seems at home here, more so than at the dorm. The boy in the maroon coat watches as the autumn leaves rustle and crush into the ground with the cooler wind. It would probably be easier to lose himself in the loneliness or take primal way out of forgetting everything in exchange for living in the present.

His dark eyes catch Koromaru investigating the perimeter of the shrine, sniffing for unfamiliar scents.

They're both ghosts. The dog has passed many nights watching over this place in vigils, and Shinjiro himself haunts an alleyway on the other end of town. Akihiko keeps saying that he needs to get out more, that he has to move on already, but whenever Shinjiro points out that his best childhood friend hasn't gotten over the death of his sister yet either, it almost always comes to blows.

Maybe that's why he likes Koromaru so much. He's just honest about it.

The white dog pads over to the main shrine, his feet making the plip-plop sound of falling rain on the stone walkway. They may not speak the same language, but the dog understand loss and having to do what's right even when it means that it's painful.

It probably wasn't always this way. Shinjiro wonders what Koromaru was like before the priest died; was he still the same, still as quiet and focused as he appears now? When it happened, did he hate ambulances or just wait outside the door to the priest's quarters for days, expecting someone who would never pass through that door again?

He remembers flashes of it: the alleyway, the trashcans stacked up in one of the corners, the green way that the moon colored everything, even the stagnant puddles from the previous night's storm. He remembers exhilaration and pride- his Persona has always been the strongest, even though Aki's a boxer and trains daily, his Persona has never had the same knock-out power as Shinjiro's. The shadow flees down the maze of streets in Port Island, streets that Shinjiro knows like the back of his hand, and he grins. Euphoria lasts a moment before he realizes what's happening- that he's more out of his body than in it, how easily Castor takes the reins and then that terrible shadow of their shared axe.

Is it any wonder he let it rule him? Nights on end in a cold corner of a corridor between buildings and he wouldn't even recognize himself. Every night, he replayed the scene in his head. Guilty, guilty, guilty, just like the fall of an axe.

The guilt isn't going to go away, not from action or inaction. But you can't live that way forever, at least he couldn't, not after he'd learnt that Ken had joined SEES, realized that there were still things left for him to do. Sometimes you just have to wait for the pain to howl itself out before you can move again. There's been a part of him that's been waiting like this for a long time, a part that's known that this was where he was heading all along, and was calmly holding its action until he was willing to move again, begin the real work.

They have to take down that tower, that he's sure of.

Meanwhile, a pair of red eyes looks up at him serenely and Koromaru drops a small item at his feet. Shinjiro picks it up, ruffles the pooch on the head, and then starts to head back to the dorm.

He's spent enough time in the alley.


	20. Four of Swords

He hates hospitals.

It might just be a bad vibe that he's gotten ever since he was a little kid, waiting with Akihiko to see if Miki survived the fire, then having his best friend turn to him, utterly broken, when they found out that she didn't. The fact that he himself has sent someone else there, some woman doomed never to wake up again after an attack during the Dark Hour, well, it doesn't add to the appeal. It's just so many people, standing still, waiting for something to happen.

So maybe that's why he's about as surprised as Akihiko is when he comes to visit. Hell, Shinjiro snorts, he's even got an audience lined up for him: two girls and a boy in a baseball cap are already waiting in the room.

"Shinji," the boxer blinks, as though trying to discern whether this is a dream or not. "What brings you here?"

He scowls. "What do you think? You gonna be okay?"

Akihiko laughs, flexes his arm. "Looks like it. The doctor said that I'll still need a few more weeks before I can get back into fighting, but it's healing nicely."

"Try not to be so stupid." Shinjiro says and then is about to take the door to the hallway when something about one of the girls catches his eye.

Not in a pretty way, like her beauty arrests him or some shit like that- no, it more like a feeling of deja vu, like he's seen her somewhere before but can't place it. But hell if he knows any girls who wear barrettes in x-shapes in their hair.

In a moment it seems like this is the calm before the storm, that this is the catalyst that will knock all that he knows about life for a loop. He frowns; he doesn't believe in past lives or anything like that, but something about her makes him wonder. Maybe they passed on the street, maybe something happened between them that he's forgotten. Whatever it is...

"You..."

Then reality snaps back and he's himself again. The kids start to give him strange stares, all of them except that girl, who keeps looking at him with a small smile, as though she's in on the joke and is waiting for him to figure out the punchline.

"...nevermind." He finishes, then goes for the door. The kid in the baseball cap moves out of his way as though he's some wild animal, prone to glaring at its prey before striking. Shinjiro rolls his eyes, but as he makes his way down the hallway and back out on the streets, something still makes him reach into his peacoat, his fingers brushing the silver edge of a pocketwatch, wondering what on earth has just been set into motion.


	21. Knight of Pentacles

"Aragaki is probably one of the most grounded individuals I know." Mitsuru tucked the bookmark back into her assigned reading, the motion chic and elegant as always. Akihiko shook his head. Of all the three members on SEES- well, maybe only two now- there was no contest about who stayed on top of their schoolwork the most. If she wasn't reading through her college level courses, she was probably training her Persona to assist them better in battle. She never ceased to amaze him. "I wouldn't worry too much about what he's up to."

The white-haired senior sighed, sat on the couch in the lounge next to her. "Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just that I don't see how anyone could not go crazy living like that each day. Doesn't he get bored with waiting at the same place? Doesn't he know that it's not going to change anything?"

"I think that's more your weakness, Akihiko." She leaned back into the comfortable plush, still looking every bit as formidable as she relaxed. "He's not like that. He has always been more the type to gather his forces for the correct moment and then strike decisively. Let him take this at his own pace."

But her companion just shrugged, shook the suggestion off.

"How is it that we can be so different? I've known him all my life, and still..." He sighed, looking at the mahogany ceiling of the dorm. "Still, there are these times when I don't have any idea what's going on in his head."

Mitsuru closed her eyes and chuckled to herself. "Does anyone know for sure what happens in the mind of another? I think that's called being human."

At once, Akihiko stood, pulling at his thin, black gloves restlessly. "I don't know how you can be so damn calm about this. Shinji's out there somewhere, maybe freezing to death out on the streets. It's been a week, Mitsuru. We have to go out there and help him. I don't care what he thinks he's trying to accomplish, he should just come back and-"

"Listen to yourself." Her voice was still calm, but it was starting to veer along the edges of the iciness that had made Mitsuru Kirijo famous at Gekkoukan High, a coldness that could rival the ice storm outside. "Do you think he would be out there if there were any place better for him to be, Akihiko?"

The boxer seethed, looked ready to make a pass for the door. But he stood there, his hands at his sides in fists, his feet spread in a wide stance, as though he had already entered a fight against something in himself.

"If Aragaki's weakness is that he lacks imagination, then yours is that you have too much of it and too little of his practicality." She swept a long finger through the book, finding her place, and the tension in the room subsided. "Trust him. You've known him longer than I have. Doesn't some part of you know that he wouldn't have it any other way?"

Akihiko's hands uncurled themselves slowly, as though with great effort. "It still doesn't mean that I agree with his staying out in that alley all the time." He paused, taking a breath, coming back to himself with a laugh that sounded like it hurt. "Although, you always did know us better than I gave you credit for."

"That's because I pay attention to these things." Mitsuru replied with a small smile, soon enough becoming deeply absorbed in her book.


	22. Page of Swords

The punks clear out long before the group of three makes their leisurely way to him. Shinjiro narrows his eyes, mouth jagged into a frown as the misfits of Port Island scamper away into the alleys and nooks of the backstreets, looking for a good place to go until this particular storm blows through. He sighs. It's out of their best interests anyway that they do, anyway, choosing their battles. Bruisers like that stopped bothering him when they realized that he could take them out in one stroke thanks to his training from SEES, and the fact that the revenge trio pays him regular visits only seems to boost his reputation as someone not to mess around with.

It comes in handy sometimes.

"So, we meet again." Takaya's teeth glitter even paler than his face, making him seem like a ghost arisen from the steam seeping through the sewer vents. His nose crunches into that delicate shape of polite disdain as he speaks. "I assume that you have been in good health since we last met?"

Shinjiro rolls his eyes. Creepy bastards making conversation. He has better things to do than this. "I've got your money. Let's just this-"

"We don't want money this time." Takaya counters, his grin spreading over his features like a smile pulled too wide on a doll's face, stitches on the sides starting to come undone. "This time, information will suffice."

The kid with the slanted hair and green sweater procures his suitcase and takes out a bottle of pills, tossing them up in the air like a toy. Shinjiro notices, but doesn't pay attention, refuses to follow the up and down motion of the bottle like they want him to. Negotiations with these guys are always a pain in the ass. But since there's no one else who has the pills, if he doesn't deal with them then it leaves him high and dry.

Castor growls somewhere within him, as though sensing the conflict.

"We believe in going about our goals relentlessly, true, and we do admire those efforts in others, especially in those who have received the same blessing. So tell us: what is it that those friends of yours do during the hidden hour?" Takaya's eyes gleam in the streetlights, like a cat waiting for a careless mouse.

There is silence for a time. Somewhere within him, Castor roars.

"Why don't you answer?" A breathy voice. The girl in the white dress turns her half-closed eyes to him in disdain. "He's not going to let you keep him like this much longer."

Jin turns to her with an expression of disbelief, thinking that she means Takaya, and though Takaya himself has not yet puzzled out the meaning of the girl's words, he does notice their effect on Shinjiro, how the former Gekkoukan High student's eyes flash just a moment. This girl has hit the nail on the head.

"Tell us." Takaya intones, voice a low purr of syllables, a hand up to silence Jin as questions bubble to his lips.

Shinjiro fights it, but he knows that he can't win. He took the last pill in that container almost half a day ago. The effects are wearing off, and after being cooped up for so long, Castor has gotten strong. He's even started to develop a resistance to the drugs in his own twisted way, which is exactly what Shinjiro would except from someone as brutally persistent as Castor. His Persona knows all the backdoors, all his weaknesses.

Taking a breath, his mind flicks from one possibility to another. What use is he going to be if he loses control now, lets Castor win? He still has things to do, things to atone for. Much as he doesn't want to rat on his friends, sometimes you get stuck between a rock and a hard place.

He just wishes that he didn't have to be trapped in his own mind so much sometimes.

"Fine." He says with great effort, pushing Castor back within himself. "What do you want to know?"


	23. The Chariot

"Shinjiro-san."

His hand jerks back from the doorknob as though it's been given an electric shock. Great, just great. Robot girl has issues to settle with him too.

Shinjiro turns around, and sure enough, the blonde, blue-eyed mechanical girl is looking at him quizzically from down the hallway. He doesn't think that he saw her when he was coming down the stairs- so was she following him? Or was she already hidden downstairs, waiting to strike? Whatever it was, it didn't stop her from being creepy as hell.

"I have a question for you." She walked forward, her words about as flat and dead as the potted plant on the sideboard that Junpei had tried to take care of and then accidentally killed during the typhoon.

He let the doorknob slip. Yeah, it wasn't like he was going anywhere with this heavy artillery in the way. He was good, don't get him wrong, but an axe against bullets was a fight that no one could expect him to win. "So what is it? Let's get this over with."

"Yes." Her expression is dark, foreboding. "Then tell me: where is it you go when you go out at night with her?"

Shinjiro has to take a step back. It's not that Aigis has moved forward or acted like she was going to attack, more that he's just surprised. He's been expecting that she'll ask about him and Ken, that she'll have figured their whole plan out already with her fast-as-lightning processors and she's trying to put a stop to it. But no, she's just worried about him and...that girl. Figures.

He shifts his weight from one foot to another, uncomfortable. What is it with her anyway? Why is a robot so concerned about their leader like that? She doesn't stop fixing him with her hardest gaze, so he replies as nonchalantly as he can. "Just out places. Restaurants and stuff. What's it to you?"

Aigis fixes him with a stare searching enough that he feels like she's trying to scan him for levels of truthfulness. Could she even do that? All he's heard is that she's a machine that was built to hunt Shadows, but if she was designed by the Kirijo Company then he wouldn't put it past them to have added on a few extra features. But he doesn't give in, instead meeting her stare with a cold enough glare of his own.

"I...am not sure what it is to me."

Shinjiro rolls his eyes. Time to call bullshit. "You wouldn't ask if it didn't mean something to you. Why are you so concerned?"

This time it is Aigis who seems unsure, something shifting through the cogs of her mind slowly, a great thought winding its way through an assembly line of philosophies and sub-processes on the way to her mouth. "She is," the robot thinks this through, tasting each word that presents itself to her for appropriateness, finally settling on, "special to me. I need to stay close to her. To protect her."

Yeah, well, so did he. Except that he doesn't have the unending lifespan of a robot to flip bits and bask in her company. Today is the last day in September. He's already starting to feel the anxiety gnawing away at him, threatening to topple his self-control, overturn everything that he's worked so hard to construct, everything he's tried to keep hidden. Every time he goes out with her at night like this, it seems like one more layer of his secrecy is burnt away and he gets one step closer to getting too swept up in her and telling her everything.

Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to stop, forget about the whole idea, forget her. It wasn't like a girl like her would understand him anyway.

Still, as he looks back between the door and the robot, he knows that that's no longer an option. Maybe everyone's getting closer and closer to losing their secrets to each other, except that they have different dates, less known and less definite than October 4th. Maybe what he's going through isn't all that uncommon. Shinjiro tries not to snicker, but a small smile flicks across his lips.

"She protects a lot of people." He says at last, hand once again finding purchase on the door. "You may not see it because you're trying to protect her all the time, but she's a lot stronger than you'd think. You just have to give her some room to let her show you."

Aigis steps back, her posture less threatening, more contemplative. "Perhaps."

They look at each other, neither giving in.

"I will still protect her, regardless of where it is you and her go." Aigis says, her voice steady and not completely without its quota of distrust. "Just so you know."

"You think I'd do any less?" Shinjiro replied. Hell, he'd seen the way that Akihiko had been looking at her those months before. Jealousy wasn't something that was unfamiliar at this point, especially considering what would happen in five days. He closed his eyes, feeling the panic well up and then becoming master of himself again. It might take a little while before his friend would get over his death, but Shinjiro didn't entertain the notion that Akihiko wouldn't eventually make his move. People get over things. And he doesn't want two of the people he's most close to wallowing in grief. Hell, he even made her promise not to cry.

He just hadn't expected that the thought of it his best friend going out with her would sting so much.

"You and I are not as dissimilar as I thought after all." Aigis said softly, with a quiet nod of her head. "Perhaps I was wrong."

"You could say that again." Shinjiro frowned. "She'll be safe."

"Agreed. But she is waiting for you." The robot seemed to be giving him his leave, telling him that his audience was now concluded. Weird. "It's getting late."

Shinjiro nodded in a slight bow and then made his exit. He'd just been given permission to go out on a date with a girl by her robotic guardian. Things didn't get stranger than that. If he'd have stayed at Port Island Station at least he wouldn't have to deal with these wackos bothering him to discuss had to put up with a lot of crap for someone who was getting ready to die.

The door to the dorm swung open and revealed a girl in red skirt and white sweater waiting for him on the steps, eating an ice cream and holding one out to him. Shinjiro rolled his eyes, but accepted the treat nonetheless.

But hey, maybe it wasn't entirely without benefit.

He caught a last glimpse of Aigis standing guard in the lounge, still as a statue in a museum, before he shut the door and then he turned to his companion, who was waiting for him to start walking to their destination. Five days left. He was going to make the most of them.

"Let's do this."


	24. Knight of Wands

"He's not listening! He's already packed up most of his things, Mitsuru!"

Akihiko Sanada took the stairs two or three at a time, slipping down them like a river enraged, frothing at the banks before a summer storm. His usually neat red sweater was in disarray and his gloves slightly as skew, as though he'd been in a fight.

Ikutsuki straightened, stood, pausing his discussion with the red-haired girl. "It's not entirely unexpected, Akihiko. After all, what he did was something quite monumental. He did end another person's life. You have to-"

"I know that!" The boxer raged. "I know! But this is crazy! He says he's going to move out of here, stop being on SEES, he probably won't even go to school anymore, he was really only doing that for us..." He voice trailed off.

"What we're saying," Mitsuru replied delicately, "is that leaving might not be the worst option."

"What?" Akihiko's eyes flashed, as though an inner lightning was clashing somewhere in him still. "So it's okay if he just leaves and goes God-knows-where?"

"Aragaki has always been able to take care of himself. If there's any of us that could handle this, it's him. Let him do what he needs to, Akihiko. You owe him that."

Akihiko's mouth spasmed between shock and a grimace. He stood there in the lounge, looking alternately horror-stuck and enraged, his hands rigid in fists at his side. Without a word, he moved to the front door with all the fury of a summer storm, opened the door and left.

For a few minutes, there was nothing. Mitsuru let out a breath that she hadn't realized that she'd been holding. It had been like this for the past two days: Aragaki holed up in his room or out late at night, unavailable for comment or conversation, Akihiko trying by turns to be cheery or comforting, or sometimes just yelling at his best friend from across the hall upstairs. She hadn't needed her Persona to tell her that something was bound to break down, that this kind of arrangement couldn't go on forever. Two in harmony surpassed one in perfection, after all. But when that harmony surrendered itself to discord, it was a terrible thing to behold.

A slow creak on the stairs alerted them to another presence. Shinjiro Aragaki walked through the lounge, not-stopping, carrying a medium-sized cardboard box and nothing else. He nodded at Mitsuru and Ikutsuki before turning the doorknob and walking out. Just before he'd left, Mitsuru could have sworn she saw a dot of blood beading on his lip.


	25. Ten of Swords

Time stops, drips.

His breath comes out in gasps, a segregated procession of condensed air curling into night, mixing with the smoke unraveling from the barrel of the pistol. Ken is staring at him, his young face rimmed with horror. Small things take on great importance: the paleness of the moon against Takaya's skin, how his heart is thudding laboriously in his ears, the red droplets on Ken's jacket from the blood spray. Everything is slowly ticking out, as surely as a pocket watch losing its springs and cogs and falling into decay, as surely as the Dark Hour halting time each night.

"How very futile." Takaya sniffs scornfully, as though even this display is distasteful. "This was not your time to fight. Still, it will all be over anyway." He waves it off, disappearing into the night. For a while, Shinjiro can't fathom why, wonders if this was all one big nightmare anyway. But then he feels the blood.

Voices drift over him, sounding far away.

"It was worth it, to fight." He quips back, his voice shaky. He's not even sure if Takaya's still there, or who he's saying this to anymore.

And was it worth it? Every pump of his heart is like a kick in the side, a fresh rupture. Forms in the alley lose their shape and substance, take on new forms until he's not sure what or who he's talking with anymore, whether or not reality is continuing or if this is all in his head.

Somewhere, Ken is sobbing, angry.

"You get to take the easy way out. You always get the easier way than me, you never stay around to deal with what happens after...!"

In the distance, something howls, maybe a dog.

Easier way out? Shinjiro considers it, as shadows rush in at him from all sides. They're not the ones that he used to fight, they're just soft and full of numbness, nibbling away quietly at the edges of his vision. He holds out his hand with some effort, moving it to cup the moon hanging bright against the green sky. Around him, like a gathering of crows, the shadows move in and for a moment he imagines that they're his friends, the rest of SEES, that crazy group hellbent on defeating evil and taking down Tartarus.

The safer thing would be to go into this knowing that he would get better; the easier thing would be to rig it so that he'd live either way. But that wouldn't accomplish anything. Ken wouldn't want to move on, Akihiko wouldn't realize that he had to let Miki go. Someone's got to be their catalyst, for all of them, but still...

"This is probably the hardest thing I've ever done."

Everything leads to this. Time stops, drips into the wet streets, seconds slide through rivulets of blood. And somewhere, a pocket watch cracks.


	26. The High Priestess

"Ah...Oh no!"

A cloud of black smoke wafted up from the stovetop.

Shinjiro covered his face with the palm of his hand, partly out of disbelief, partly to keep the steam from choking him. How was it even possible for her to mess up this badly on something that simple? He could have sworn that he was looking at her the whole time, but oh no, leave it to little Miss I'm-Good-with-Anything-As-Long-As-It's-Not-Edible to improvise while he strained the pasta. Pulling the cookie sheet out from its nook between mixing bowls, he batted at the air almost like he was swinging his axe in battles.

Take this, Shadows. May you rue the day Shinjiro Aragaki comes for you with one of these, he muttered to himself darkly. Hell, if anyone from Port Island saw him like this, he would be the laughingstock of the entire backalley culture he'd worked to build himself into.

Fuuka, though, did not see the humor.

"Ooh, senpai, I'm so sorry!" Her eyes were shut, either from embarrassment or the smoke. It was a toss-up at this point; the acrid smog drifting up from the stove was enough to make him want to shut it all out, forget that this was happening under his supervision, in a place that used to be solely his domain. "I honestly don't know what happened! I tried to do everything just like you said!"

Shinjiro swatted the air around the smoke detector with renewed vigor. Hell, if this thing went off it would just make tonight perfect. Already they were getting stares from Mitsuru and that brown-haired girl, the two of whom had been having a conversation about Persona tactics while curiously glancing over at what he and Fuuka had been up to in the kitchen. His arms were starting to get tired, but he kept at it.

Persistence, sometimes, was key.

"Were you stirring it," another fan of the cookie tray punctuated his sentence, "constantly? Because if not," he batted at the smoke again, "that makes this scenario whole a lot less mysterious."

Fuuka's mouth opened in a mix of epiphany and shock. "I had to stir the sauce constantly? I thought it would be okay to just let it sit for a while and simmer..."

Shinjiro opened the back door and waved the smoke out into the night with the cookie tray, at last starting to notice the density of the black clouds going down. "Does this look fine to you?"

The teal-haired girl mumbled something that sounded like agreement and plopped down miserably into a seat at the counter. This was not uncommon after a cooking mishap, the inevitable self-hatred and soul-searching that would follow as Fuuka pondered what on earth made her fated only to produce ash. Shinjiro, on the other hand, preferred to spend this time more productively, and was already working on scrubbing splashes of half-charred sauce off the cooking range and kitchen walls.

"I just don't get it sometimes. All I want to do is make something that's good, that everyone can eat without wondering if they're going to be okay after. I just want this to work." Fuuka sighed, as though she had put all of her hope into that last word.

"It seems like," Shinjiro threw the paper towel away and pulled a fresh one from the roll, "you're trying too hard. You notice that you don't always do everything the way I tell you to? Like with the sauce, yeah, but earlier when I asked you if you'd added the butter you nearly dumped in olive oil."

"Perhaps olive was a little off," Fuuka admitted, "but oil and butter are both fats, so..."

Shinjiro rolled his eyes. "Tch. Look, cooking is about following a set of rules and sticking to them."

"But our leader adds things to the stuff we make all the time! We even made banana cupcakes once and-"

Waving it off, Shinjiro tried not to give into the urge to glance over to the lounge again. "Yeah, that comes later. First, you need to get good at the basics. Like...scales, right? Or your meditation exercises or whatever," he hastened to add, trying to come up with an adept comparison. "You do it by the book before you improvise on a melody. You probably didn't start off hunting for Shadows outside the tower before you meditated for a while either."

He wasn't sure what exactly Fuuka did in order to prepare for their missions, but he hoped that the analogy held water. She seemed to get it, slowly nodding.

"That's right. I had to start small and be really careful that I was doing everything exactly as I was supposed to. It's like learning how a new appliance works when all the manuals are in languages you don't understand; you have to make sure that the commands you give the device are having the desired effect before you try more complicated functions out."

Shinjiro blinked. "Uh...yeah."

What the hell did he know about electronics? It wasn't exactly like he was in the loop with this stuff since moving out of the dorm. He was lucky if he could catch his cooking shows on at the restaurants he'd worked part-time at every once in a while.

But Fuuka seemed cheered by this. "I think...I think I understand a little more what I've been doing wrong! I've always thought that there was something inside, some magic voice that you had to listen to all the time about what to do. But, um, it's difficult to explain, but I don't think it's entirely like that now. It's like a marriage of opposites. You have to be grounded in what works, but also be on the look-out for your instincts to tell you what to do next. Is that right, Shinjiro-senpai?"

Her companion waved it off. At this point, he was out of his league. But whatever. As long as the kitchen didn't suffer too much, it was probably the right track.

"Oh!" Fuuka's eyes were wide. "I just realized that there's so much to clean up and..."

She stared. In the time that she had been speaking and mulling her cooking difficulties over, Shinjiro had wiped the sauce stains off almost all the surfaces that they had marred, except for a pesky spot on one of the cabinets that he had to reach for.

"You already did it." She looked downcast. "I'm sorry, I should have helped more besides just sat here and talk to myself."

Shinjiro shrugged it off. "You figured something out, right?"

Fuuka nodded. "Yes, I did."

"Then that's enough."

The girl smiled, then went over to the lounge. Shinjiro got the last of the sauce spatters and replaced the much-abused saucepan in the cupboard before looking out across the room at the trio of girls talking to themselves by the door.

Closure was hard to come by these days. So, as long as she found it, Shinjiro thought, his eyes drifting to another girl than the one he'd just helped with her cooking, then yeah, that would be enough.


	27. Four of Wands

"We really appreciate it, Aragaki-san." The manager bowed low, forehead already streaked with the sheen of the midday rush's sweat. "It was really short notice and I don't think we could have found anyone better suited to take over for the week. I'll be out front, so please don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything you need."

Shinjiro waved him off. Honestly, you'd think that he was a celebrity the way that people talked about him. If there was ever a way to alienate the cooks that he would be working with, it was probably something pretty close to this. He'd been able to make good headway with them in the five days that he'd been working at Wakatsu, but there would always be some degree of separation between the full-time guys and him, the outsider that their manager had literally chosen off the street.

It wasn't like Shinjiro hadn't been successful: his dishes matched the menu's standards and exceeded them in several areas, earning him compliments from the customers about the quality. His coworkers hadn't had much to complain about; as long as the work got done and the food tasted good, Shinjiro didn't particularly care how they did it. If he owned the joint, sure, he would be more specific, take an interest. Like insist that the one guy in back lay off the pepper a bit, or the sous chef slice his onions less thickly. But hey, it wasn't like he would be running the show forever.

This was just temporary, until the usual guy returned from his week off. His wife had a baby or something and he was skipping out to be with her and the kid. Whatever.

"Got three orders of the special!" A waiter pinned up a new form, hastily looking around the kitchen for signs of life. "You guys ready for a big night?"

There was a murmuring of agreement. Tonight was a conference night at one of the nearby hotels and they were expected to see a lot of customers hitting up the Iwatodai strip shops for a taste of the local culture.

Shinjiro plucked the tickets from their places and glanced over them. One of these bastards wanted something complicated, but the rest looked fine. "Alright."

Orders flew past, dishes lining up under the heat lamps and just as quickly disappearing into the crowd. Once or twice when the kitchen doors opened, Shinjiro thought he'd see a familiar face, like Akihiko laughing at a table in the crowd, or that girl from the dorm, but then the doors would shut and he would tell himself to stop being an ass and get on with laying out the skirt steak on the next order.

"This is amazing!" The manager flew back in an hour later, watching in awe as the kitchen sailed through its orders. "We're full up, but we're even getting some people just asking for take-out containers so that they can order and eat at home." He shook his head with a smile. "You know, Aragaki-san, you've got talent. I can't count how many people have commented on your eye for presentation and exquisite taste. You could go somewhere with this, maybe open up your own place."

The knife hovered over the meat. Open his own place...?

The manager laughed. "Although, please not around here! You'd take all our customers away. So, what do you say? Got any plans for when you graduate high school?"

Shinjiro sliced through another filet, expertly shaping the steak and seasoning it on its plate. Plans, huh? He'd neglected to tell the manager that he'd dropped out of high school, that any interest he'd had had been stomped out when he'd taken someone else's life a year ago in an alley. It didn't feel right to be doing this, to be succeeding when he had done something that bad.

But the annals of guilt and justice are difficult to explain in between final prep on orders on a busy night, so he settled instead for:

"Maybe. I'll think about it."


	28. Ace of Wands

"You want help with that?" Akihiko grinned up at him from the bottom of the stairs, watching his childhood friend cart a box of belongings up to his old room. "We could have a moving-in party like the girls had for Fuuka, bust out the cake and everything."

Shinjiro rolled his eyes, trying to concentrate on getting the door open and not dropping the box. "You don't need to look so smug, Aki."

"Me, smug?" The boxer hopped up the stairs in several energetic bounds, and got the door to the spare room for him. "I'm just excited you're finally back. It took you long enough, anyway. I was starting to worry that you wouldn't be able to catch up."

Dropping the box of his belongings on the bed, Shinjiro cocked an eyebrow at his friend's comment. "What, you don't think I can take care of myself out there anymore?"

"I'm just saying that you haven't been in the game for a while. Sure you still know how to fight in there?" Akihiko grinned playfully.

"You wait and see."

"I will." The white-haired boy replied, then dashed out into the hall for a moment. When he returned, he was carrying a silver case. "It's the same one you had before. I didn't think it would have worked to let someone else use it."

Shinjiro took the briefcase, set it down by the desk, and shook his head. "You never knew when to quit."

"Hey, it paid off, right? Alright, I gotta go, but tomorrow night let's go to Hakagure. My treat."

Akihiko waved and then disappeared back into the hallway then down the stairs. Alone in his old room, barren of decoration or personal marking, Shinjiro sagt on the bed and looked at the silver case containing his Evoker.

Yeah, he was coming back. Akihiko was right about that at least.

Shinjiro popped open the clasps and took out the gun that rested inside the box, his fingers running over the cold metal. The last time he'd touched this, things had gone horribly wrong. He'd made a promise to himself that he would never go back to this, that his first time killing another person would be the last time he wielded this power. But things had changed.

Shinjiro let the Evoker drop onto the table with a soft thud, the gunmetal gleaming in the room's dim light.

He just hoped he had the courage to finish what he'd started.


	29. The World

Shinjiro Aragaki woke up at 3:24 in the afternoon on a lonely day in March, watching his hospital room's curtains flutter in the breeze from an open window.

Huh.

"You know, you'd figure that I'd finally learn my lesson and stop trying to come back." He stretched as much as he could without causing himself pain; his chest still felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it or something. He wasn't disoriented: he'd been awake for snatches of time before. It was like waking up after sleeping in for a long time- you knew that you were asleep but you couldn't do get up, just kept sinking back into the dream where you'd left off.

The dream, though, never seemed to change. Green sky, gold moon, streets washed red with blood. He knew that somewhere in the distance were things that he had to confront but what he kept coming back to, focusing on when he should have been trying to talk to that kid about how none of this was his fault, was something entirely selfish.

Hell, he'd never wanted to make her cry. But he'd done it anyway.

"So, you are awake."

Shinjiro nearly fell out of his bed. The machine nearby that monitored his heart-rate let out a series of agitated blips, red spikes poking up on the screen in rapid succession. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Aigis cocked her head to one side as though this was the most illogical question she had ever heard. "Today is the day you wake up. Since I am the only one that remembers, then it makes sense that I am the only one here."

Rolling his eyes, Shinjiro sank back onto the hospital bed, noticing that the white terrycloth sheets suddenly seemed a lot less crisp and brilliant and now verged more towards sterile and suffocating. He wasn't going to say anything to the robot about it, but hell, he'd be lying if he admitted that this was what he'd thought would be waiting for him after a long time of sleeping. Not that he got along great with all of those guys, but he'd figured that Aki would show. Mitsuru might put in an appearance, and because she liked to mark these occasions formally.

But really, what got him wasn't the absence of his former classmates, or even the team that he had left and then rejoined. He hadn't even expected Junpei or Yukari, and Ken seemed like a long shot at best-he'd need some time to himself to get himself together before they talked again. But he _had_ been hoping for one person, one girl with her goofy barrettes and infectious smile...

And she was nowhere to be found.

"Thanks, I guess." He replied at last, aware of the cold timbre of his voice. It wasn't like he hadn't been wrong about people before. It was just that this time he was hoping that that girl would have been different. Guess not.

"You seem dismissive." Aigis commented dryly. "Perhaps it is because you're wondering why I am the only one, even though I have already told you that I am the only one that remembers?"

"Whatever." He closed his eyes as if ending discussion of the matter. "If those guys are busy, then that's fine. I mean, it's probably the middle of school, right? How long was I out?"

"It is currently late afternoon, mid-March."

Shinjiro's eyes flew open. "Holy shit."

And sure enough, when he looked outside he could tell that things were different. There were still few leaves on the trees, as there had been in October, but instead of leaves falling off, it seemed like new buds were growing. He could almost make out the pink of the cherry trees threatening to burst out into full color.

"The rest of them have forgotten. Perhaps you have not, because you were sleeping. They do not remember the existence of the Dark Hour, even though they were the ones to put an end to it. They do not remember defeating the Shadows because that time has disappeared. But they made a promise to meet again at graduation. Perhaps..."

Shinjiro shook his head. This was a hell of a lot to ask a guy to wake up to after being shot. "If you say that all of them forgot what they did and that I only know about it because I slept through it, then how come you still remember?"

Aigis was silent for a long time before she responded. "Machines do not forget."

Deciding that that was all the answer that he was going to get, Shinjiro nodded and then looked at his bedside table. Something battered and silver gleamed up from the wood surface. "What happened to this?"

It was his old pocketwatch, but it looked like someone had beaten it up, too. God damn it, Shinjiro thought, first he almost died, his closest friends forgot about him, and then someone wrecked his stuff. What a great time to be alive.

"It was found in your pocket." A man in a white coat leaned against the door convivially. "Glad to see you've regained consciousness, Aragaki-san. We've been monitoring your condition over the past few days and we had a feeling that you'd wake up soon. Forgive me for not being present right away to explain; we've been treating a lot of cases recently."

Shinjiro's eyes narrowed. "Apathy syndrome?"

"Oh no!" The doctor laughed, already quickly scanning the machines for signs that everything was operating smoothly. "That was over a long while ago. Just about all of our patients in that category have been discharged. Nah, what we've got now is a fresh influx of people with cases of spring colds." He smiled good-naturedly. "But, that's the thing about being a doctor: it never ends. Oh, you wanted to know about this watch, right?"

Shinjiro nodded, still feeling a little left behind by both this man's energy and the passage of time.

"When you were brought in, we found this in your left breast pocket. At first we thought it was a bullet, since it was in the middle of the affected area." The doctor shook his head, smiling. "You better thank your lucky stars next time you visit the shrine: turns out it absorbed most of the impact of one of the bullets. See this indentation here, by the clasp? That's where the round got stuck. Heck, if that watch hadn't been in your pocket that night, we might be having a very different conversation, or no conversation at all." He bowed. "Anyway, I'll get your exit exams scheduled. It'll still be a little while before your release, but we can get some of the paperwork and preliminaries in the works."

Even as the doctor left, Shinjiro turned the watch over and over in his hand. He'd lost it near the end of September, thought he'd never get it back, only to have it returned to him in the nick of time. He could still remember it: that night in the shrine where out of nowhere she'd pulled it out like it was a magic trick, then laughed at him when he said he'd gotten her a watch of her own. It was all thanks to her. If she hadn't...

"Small things," Aigis mused, "sometimes have great consequences."

He could only nod.


	30. Ace of Pentacles

"Hell." Shinjiro Aragaki swore as the fruit knife nicked his hand. He stopped slicing the potatoes (the fruit knife was the only one he had, so it was pulling double duty with vegetable prep as well), lay the knife on the cutting board, and stuck his hand under a stream of cold water from the sink. This was not what they showed you in all those cooking shows. No, on TV it was a hell of a lot easier to pull together a stew than in real life.

He waited for the blood to stop running from the cut. It was only a small injury, nothing worse than what he'd seen fighting Shadows with Akihiko and Mitsuru, that was for sure. But even the cold water seemed to be telling him something in the late night as it rolled over the wound, slowly coaxing his body to seal the cut. Things take time.

Time, yeah, he'll say.

He can't even count the number of hours he'd trained with Castor by this point. Mitsuru was always stressing that they had to be cautious- as a team of three they couldn't do too much, especially since one of those three members switched between active duty in battle and providing support. Shinjiro felt like sometimes he had to remind himself that training wasn't like the cooking shows: you couldn't just pull out a new attack like a chef whisked out a pre-baked tray of cookies from an oven.

In reality, he still had a long way to go.

He bandaged his hand and watched as the broth started to separate in the pot he'd placed on the stove and sighed. Well, so much for the midnight snack. At least he hadn't gotten to adding in the vegetables, so starting over wouldn't be so bad. The last of the failed broth sloshed down the drain and Shinjiro wondered to himself if it wouldn't just be easier to give up.

He glanced again at his hand, then got out the ingredients for the broth again.

One more time. It might take a while, but someday he'll get the hang of this damn thing.


End file.
